UnderstandingConversion RateOptimisation

Conversion Rate Optimisation (CRO)

At Digital Associate we can help you improve conversion rate, and not necessarily help gain more traffic (Although we can help with that too) but convert the traffic you already have into more sales. Don’t spend more money than you need to.

Often from our experience many website owners will spend more and more money at traffic generation, when history shows that the fastest, most reliable way for you to increase your website derived profitability is to improve the percentage of website visitors who you turn into qualified leads, and then quickly convert into new customers.

Recognising that every percentage increase in your conversion rate adds more profit into your business (without overburdening your traffic budget) you will be helped to become more cost effective and more productive, typically within three months.

Be aware that when you boost your conversion rate, you will also help to ‘scale up’ the resulting sales, and thereby ensure that your business can enjoy rapid growth – by transforming currently non-profitable traffic into profitable traffic, and currently profitable traffic into very profitable traffic. It’s straightforward when you step back and look at it afresh, we find in our dealings with most customers.

When your conversion rate becomes high enough, getting traffic is no longer a problem, as from then you can profitably fund all the traffic you need proportionate to your business circumstances.

Conversion Rate Optimisation gives you the economic engine you need to get more traffic and make more profit from every website visitor.

Let’s be honest here… there are many things that a business like yours needs to do to optimise their online profits.

Recognise that in truth trying to do them all yourself doesn’t usually happen and is virtually impossible in most cases, unless you are a very large business with large resources.

The chances are that you are probably already aware of things you should be optimising on your website, and if you aren’t, then your need for assistance is greater still.

It’s just a question of what you can get done yourself or in-house. There are usually so many constituent parts and requirements in the process of optimising your company’s website. Driving traffic, creating content, being active and effective on social media, building your target customer list, sending emails, networking and building relationships, the list is endless.

Even the largest and most established of SME businesses, with lots of employees, normally finds it is hard to focus and devote resources to optimising website traffic conversion, because it’s never been a priority focus and there are always so many other time-consuming things being worked on.

What’s more it’s a fact that improving performance and getting very good at conversion optimisation takes considerable time, energy and determined perseverance on your part. That’s why you may have come to recognise that this area of your business is best left to professionals andis why you’re reading this.

In addition, because we’ve worked on hundreds of CRO projects before yours (we’re not novices), we’re usually able to quickly “cross fertilise” our proven concepts from other customers in other industries into your website, so that you can enjoy and benefit from our proven experience, thereby helping to gain your business some quick wins.

Over time we have put together a robust and proven methodology for delivering conversion rate improvements that are implemented in five proven stages:

Stage 1: Low Hanging Fruit

As a result of our experience and conducting conversion tests most days and weeks, we can usually identify small but important tweaks and the conversion bottlenecks in your site that we can quickly remedy, usually resulting in several fast and simple quick wins for your business.

Here a few typical examples that we often find:

Weak benefits in customer headlines or the wrong type of benefits in your headlines (your copy should be written in the prospect’s language), not enough benefit proof elements, or the right proof but in the wrong place.

In addition, we often find weak or missing calls to action, frequently combined with formatting mistakes in your forms, and then typically this dovetails with usage of the wrong “call to action” buttons.

These are the kind of mistakes and oversights that are possibly, or more likely probably, costing you sales right now, so fast action is self-funding, and they are all things that can be quickly fixed. That’s exactly what we do in Stage 1.

Usually, we find that these straightforward tweaks to these “leverage points” can increase your conversion rate almost immediately.

Stage 2: Gaining Competitive Insights

Once that your low-hanging fruit has been accessed and consumed then we assemble competitive insights from the most successful players in your industry, both regionally and nationally (and internationally where appropriate and applicable).

We certainly don’t condone copying, mimicking or ‘loaning’….ahem competitor actions (apart from an ethical standpoint, there’s nothing to prove that they always know what’s best or haven’t copied others in truth), but can be a quick way to determine the “conversion blueprint” of your market for you to re-engineer and re-invent to your own advantage. We subscribe to and use specialist analysis software to evaluate your competitor’s web activity. This usually leads to establishing with you:

The specific benefits that your customers must see in order to consider you as a viable alternative.

The successful proof elements and credibility sought from suppliers from your industry.

The key signals and ‘buying language’ that your prospective customers both seek and exhibit.

The ability to analyse your competitors’ activity and establish why it is that some are succeeding, and others are not, is one of the fastest ways to learn you will typically find.

Stage 3: Implementing Conversion Research

At this stage and following this logical sequence you should start to understand your market, competitors and derive how they exist, operate and function daily.

Now, in Stage 3, we can move on to discovering and communicating to your prospective customers:

How you can solve their problems better than all your competitors.

How to prove every claim you make to them (referrals, testimonials, case studies etc).

The best way to motivate your prospects to enquire or buy, and with a sense of induced urgency.

This phase can incorporate both qualitative methods (There are varied methods, but we usually use at least some of these, such as email surveys, usability testing, in-depth online interviews and other industry specific methods) as well as quantitative research methods (e.g. analytics, heat maps, survey and analysis.). No two scenarios are the same.

You will find that by gaining a thorough understanding of how your best prospects operate and think, you’ll quickly be way ahead of the game, and your competitors.

Stage 4: Building the Ideal Pitch

Now it’s getting interesting. Here we take the time to take all the insights gained in the first 3 Stages, and develop new web page designs, landing pages, copy, offers and other test elements to go and test directly against your current sales letter, opt in page or website.

By thoroughly and professionally getting the assistance to lay your groundwork correctly, you will now have the best possible chance of not just beating your control but sweeping it aside fast and efficiently.

Stage 5: Conversion Tracking

Now the best bit possibly. Here we scientifically test your new alternative(s) against your current version to verify and quantify conversion improvements. Using extensive and proven software, we split your traffic between the different test variations and track the conversion results. A statistical significance at the 95% level or higher is required to successfully identify and confirm the new “champion” version.

This process is frequentative in that future tests are based on the results of previous experiments. Each new test builds on the success of previous ones. It’s a ‘virtuous circle’.

Need help boosting your Conversion Rates

Why not contact us for a free consultationand see if we can improve your leads to customersconversion rate for your website.